Guild Wars 2

When I first played FotM I was shocked at how incredibly fun they were. All of these little mini dungeons to explore and interesting boss fights to learn. Unfortunately, the more you level the worse they get and it hurts to see something so brilliant start to suffer from bad design choices. With that said, I want to give the developers credit for trying something new. We can’t fault them for not getting it right on the first try.

I’d like to point out some flaws (in descending order) that I hope we can see fixed and can possibly avoid in the future.

(5.) Mass enemy respawning
This is the sole reason most skip the dredge fractal. So many enemies spawn the only way to complete the event is to either wipe or to avoid the content. Infinite scaling exacerbates this problem too.

(4.) Agony on hit
Agony itself is a good way to “gear check” harder fractals, but its implementation is disproportionate for all players. Many times only the player with the boss’ agro suffers from all of the agony, other times it can be ignored completely with a dodge, and sometimes it’s absolutely impossible to avoid.

(3.) RNG rewards
I’m very unhappy with this and “unhappy” is the nicest way to phrase this. We have tokens and ascension quality drops that could be used to craft/buy our ascension gear. Someone should not run 2 dailies and get their perfect rings while someone else has to run 100. Can’t sell, buy, or trade to even give a bad 2nd option. This is very frustrating.

(2.) Infinite Scaling
Simple number increases are not enough to balance a bump in difficulty. The HP increase of an enemy simply increases the time it takes for that boss to die and is irrelevant because everything becomes solely about survivability. The damage enemies deal with infinite scaling becomes so high that only the best toughness and healing support builds can survive. DPS builds become a liability as all they do is reduce the time an enemy survives.

(1.) Levels aka LFxM FotM ##
This system is so outrageously poor that it has dominated the map chat of every lion’s arch across every server and overflow. Entire websites and guilds were designed just to overcome it’s broken nature. A dungeon finder would alleviate this greatly, but it wouldn’t change the fact that most of us have to choose between playing with our actual friends and complete strangers that happen to share our skill level.

I do hope we see some drastic changes that make fractals fun again and I would like to offer some solutions in order to do so.

(5.) Reduce the respawning of enemies by about 2/3rds. This harms dredge, and cultist fractals the most.
(4.) Make Agony tick evenly across on all players every 30sec of a boss encounter. Scale its damage accordingly to adjust for this.
(3.) Keep the current system but allow players to buy the ring of their choice from the golem vendor for a high amount of Fractal Relics.
(2.) Remove infinite scaling.
(1.) Reduce Fractals to 3 levels, easy, normal, and hard. Easy would be level 1 as is for leveling alts and new players to get gear and experience in a fun dungeon. Normal would require an 80+ character and be the difficulty of 10 without agony. Hard should be level 20 with agony, only getting easier when more agony resist is required. With this model a Very Hard could be added down the road as more ascension gear is released.

Agreed with all the points except for 5. I enjoy doing the dredge fractal because of all the enemies there are to kill. They drop a lot of loot which is awesome. The respawning of enemies on the Charr fractal in the first part where you need to break down the gate is annoying because they don’t drop loot. Loot = money!

Number 2 is the worst problem IMO

The further you go, the more the builds become straight up cookie-cutter that favour pure defense and survivability over anything else.

At least in other MMO’s you had specific roles like tank or healer. With GW2 fractals, everyone needs to be running in what amounts to basically the same gear specs. Really, really lame.

I think you’re right on almost all of this, except #1.
3 difficulties totally takes away the brilliant progression of fractals, there are still many people driven into getting to the highest level they can, and if fractals suddenly just had easy, medium, and hard, all those people would already be done with it, and go back to sitting around LA.

My fix for fractals is to have a new fractal level be a bar, like heart quests are. You can do lower level fractals with your friends and still progress, and doing yours will progress you as well, though maybe to a better degree, it may need tweaking, but maybe split exp curves for it into tiers of 5 or 10, so there are less segments of the playerbase.

Splitting it into 3 very static difficulties kind of kills a big part of what makes Fractals cool to me, and just gives off a bland feel of what certain other games do with their endgame content, that made me quit them in the first place.

Are you joking? How you dare to ask to remove gear grind noone asked, racism on chat, elitist ragequitting lv x daily noobs (on his personal view), /map harrassed of LFG/LFM fractal x, one per hour LFG dungeon x, act as a pro because you’re 50 and noobs still struggle to find base rings for +5 agony resist. Hey! Roflmao.
5 would be adorable, from 40 to 50
4 would make more rare find groups, elitism, youre all noobs etc, you know?
3 just forget it, it’s a RNG based game
2 50 is the limit
1 Hey, people love gear grind and numbers, 50 is pro, 30 is noob, are you joking?

Such a fail

i did so many lvl 10 and NO ring, WTF ? !!!!!

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Are you joking? How you dare to ask to remove gear grind noone asked, racism on chat, elitist ragequitting lv x daily noobs (on his personal view), /map harrassed of LFG/LFM fractal x, one per hour LFG dungeon x, act as a pro because you’re 50 and noobs still struggle to find base rings for +5 agony resist. Hey! Roflmao.
5 would be adorable, from 40 to 50
4 would make more rare find groups, elitism, youre all noobs etc, you know?
3 just forget it, it’s a RNG based game
2 50 is the limit
1 Hey, people love gear grind and numbers, 50 is pro, 30 is noob, are you joking?

Such a fail

What a very cynical take on the playerbase you have. I’ve encountered almost no people like this in GW2 surprisingly enough, are you on the right forums?

I am on the right game for sure, and the right forum too.
And ye, i met as described so many my block list is so long i cannot read it all.
Do you pug them, or you play just with guildies and friends maybe?
Obiouvsly, i’m not so dumb to say the entire playerbase is as described, or i wouldn’t be so high on my level, meeting so many talented player with nice attitude too.

what fractals really need is a good dungeon finder and a way to access overflow without when there is too few people in LA. its easy to find a group on the player made gwlfg site, however, at certain times of the day its impossible to play due to no overflow. Because all the players who want to play same level as you is not on the same server.

(4.) Make Agony tick evenly across on all players every 30sec of a boss encounter. Scale its damage accordingly to adjust for this.

I dont agree to this point. right now you can avoid most agony attacks with the exception of the Maw. this is all about skill and concentration. besides at 20+ without much agony resistance you would die quickly by being hit with agony attacks every 30 sec.

(3.) Keep the current system but allow players to buy the ring of their choice from the golem vendor for a high amount of Fractal Relics.

I dont see how point 3 is going to work well. at level 10-18 you get normal ascended rings. at 20+ you have a chance of getting ascended infused rings. if you were to upgrade to infused yourself it would cost you an arm and a leg in gold to upgrade it. If you were to get these easily by just farming daily rewards and lower lvl fractals it certainly wouldnt be balanced.

I disagree with all 5 points as stated:

• ANet has stated that 1 will be addressed, although not in the way you describe. Fragmenting the player base was unintended, however there is a need to isolate capability tiers. Level 80 is hardly a requirement as the scaling is sufficient to make a level 1 character strong enough to handle the content; the inability to equip agony resistance gear is the only stopping point for a sub-80. You admit that you will need mroe tiers to handle future expansion, but that is why infinite scaling is currently in place—game design that requires each update to force a review of all prior content is doomed to slow to a crawl or abandon old content.

• 2 is necessary because my concept of easy and yours probably varies tremendously. I found the Hard Mode in GW1 to be downright trivial in most cases, yet others found it nearly impossible. Infinite scaling is the only way to address this. If particular team builds cease to complete the content at some point, it is because they have reached the limit of what they can do—without infinite scaling, the top-end content will either be impossible for everybody or trivial to some people.

• 3 is a non-issue because, as has been stated many, many times, there will be many ways to procure this gear—what is available now is available because they didn’t want to release fractals without it as that would have made agony a complete barrier to all progress. Unfortunately, they were not ready for an across-the-board rollout of the gear; had it been ready it would have probably been out at release time. The reward system is not the dungeon design, claiming that one invalidates the accomplishemnts of the other is short-sighted at best.

• 4 sounds like nice, varied encounter design to me. The threats are varied and different groups of players must react depending on the encounter and situation. The general design of fractals is that as they get harder, the fundamental strategy does not change, but the margin of error does. This forces groups to abandon failing strategies and adopt others. The goal of agony is not to provide a gear check, but a skill check.

• I’ve never had this issue you describe with the dredge fractal. Enemies respawn because there are always supposed to be enemies there; you must endure their damage while accomplishing the goal. I don’t understand how this is a design flaw, it is a design.

I agree that the limited reward system needs to be addressed, and the fragmentation of the player base is an issue but in terms of design, I think Fractals got it right. Is fragmentation a plague and awful design? No, it is a side effect of scalable content and players that devour content ravenously without any loyalty to a set group of players. My guild doesn’t have the issue because it is our goal to play together, and that is what we do.

What is truly awful is lv50. You’re just paper. Fine, you can hope to dodge fractals dealing triple time the same fractal to loot blue trash you can easily get with less stress at lv30. At maw, you have to use some cheats, or it’s just an instawipe. 30 res or 0 is the same. Just an other fail.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

What is truly awful is lv50. You’re just paper. Fine, you can hope to dodge fractals dealing triple time the same fractal to loot blue trash you can easily get with less stress at lv30. At maw, you have to use some cheats, or it’s just an instawipe. 30 res or 0 is the same. Just an other fail.

um, you realize that’s probably because they didn’t intend for you to get that high right now? you simply don’t have enough agony to continue, and you won’t have enough until they introduce more items.

99.99% of people are nowhere close to level 50

watch the op/tc get infracted for trying to talk about fractals

Ebon.7641:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

What is truly awful is lv50. You’re just paper. Fine, you can hope to dodge fractals dealing triple time the same fractal to loot blue trash you can easily get with less stress at lv30. At maw, you have to use some cheats, or it’s just an instawipe. 30 res or 0 is the same. Just an other fail.

um, you realize that’s probably because they didn’t intend for you to get that high right now? you simply don’t have enough agony to continue, and you won’t have enough until they introduce more items.

99.99% of people are nowhere close to level 50

So why they exists, and at 50 you cannot go further?

The design is that the dungeon gets more and more difficult until it is, in theory, borderline impossible. This is the design; if you have reached the point of ‘impossible,’ then maybe you need to play at that tier… you are playing because it is fun and challenging, not because you just want to farm masive rewards, right?

Well, if just they finally change the fractal exotics weapons we drop to ascended (and it makes sense, not just a stupid skin neither blinking), 50 and over would be quite doable. Till when we need armors. Wasn’t the plan?

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Well, if just they finally change the fractal exotics weapons we drop to ascended (and it makes sense, not just a stupid skin neither blinking), 50 and over would be quite doable. Till when we need armors. Wasn’t the plan?

The plan is to slowly introduce ascended gear for all slots over the coming months, it has been posted many times. Of course 50+ agony demolishes you when there are only 2 rings and a backpack in the game… this dungeon was designed as a long-term dungeon that you can progress further as they add more ascended gear and as they introduce more variety through new fractals. It’s not a dungeon you’re suppose to “beat”, especially with only 3 ascended slots currently available.

That’s the whole point of an infinite scaling dungeon, eventually it will be too hard to complete. The challenge is getting as high as possible. Some people…

Until the hassle is worthy, why not. Drop blue trash? No thanks. Dailies and i’m out.

Strifey.7215:

Of course 50+ agony demolishes you when there are only 2 rings and a backpack in the game… this dungeon was designed as a long-term dungeon that you can progress further as they add more ascended gear and as they introduce more variety through new fractals. It’s not a dungeon you’re suppose to “beat”, especially with only 3 ascended slots currently available.

It’s easy to think that way if you haven’t done Jade Maw 50, however, the dungeon isn’t actually working like that.

Here are some numbers for you to think about

40-49 bosses with 0 agony resist – 72% hp/sec
Jade Maw 40-49 with 0 agony resist – 72% hp/sec
40-49 bosses with 25 agony resist – 45% hp/sec
Jade Maw 40-49 with 25 agony resist – 45% hp/sec

Now, get ready to have your mind blown

50-59 bosses with 0 agony resist – 72% hp/sec
Jade Maw 50-59 with 0 agony resist – 1172% hp/sec
50-59 bosses with 25 agony resist – 45% hp/sec
Jade Maw 50-59 with 25 agony resist – 1050%~ hp/sec (I didn’t bother figuring out the exact number on this one)

Do you see where it all falls apart? It’s obvious they don’t want you to get past 50, but the way it has been implemented makes no sense at all. It should continue scaling up gradually like it had been, but it doesn’t.

Player with lower health will outlast high health player at agony check if they both heal the same. Does it make any sense in any mmo game? And defense is of course ignored.

noobftw.9654:

Player with lower health will outlast high health player at agony check if they both heal the same. Does it make any sense in any mmo game? And defense is of course ignored.

The fact that agony is percentage based is not a problem, as the alternatives are worse. Agony itself is not a bad mechanic, considering how easy it is to avoid almost everything in this game with kiting / projectile blocks / dodge button, and how easy it is to mitigate damage with weakness / protection. Agony resist, however, is not a particularly exciting mechanic.

As for making sense, it’s familiar to Guild Wars players. 55 HP monks (when normal health was 500-600) were the best tanks for a long time, until Shadow Form Assassins started popping up.

Pinch.4273:

noobftw.9654:

Player with lower health will outlast high health player at agony check if they both heal the same. Does it make any sense in any mmo game? And defense is of course ignored.

The fact that agony is percentage based is not a problem, as the alternatives are worse. Agony itself is not a bad mechanic, considering how easy it is to avoid almost everything in this game with kiting / projectile blocks / dodge button, and how easy it is to mitigate damage with weakness / protection. Agony resist, however, is not a particularly exciting mechanic.

As for making sense, it’s familiar to Guild Wars players. 55 HP monks (when normal health was 500-600) were the best tanks for a long time, until Shadow Form Assassins started popping up.

Not a lot of players here started with gw1. So how about some common sense that applies to a broader audience?
HP means hit point. More HP means me can has more hits. But in GW2, it means the opposite. How about this, DPS means damage per second. Now let’s invent a new boss in GW2 that it takes longer to kill when you have more DPS?

If all classes had the same base health, percentage-based damage would be unusual. Because some classes have a higher base health, percentage-based damage keeps true to the concept of balanced normalized health which is an underpinning of the game; a guardian sits at ~8k less than a warrior with equal stats. Agony is designed to threaten everyone equally and serve as a gear check on progression.

Is 50+ not implemented and the agony so severe that it is being used as a wall instead of a gate for now? Is 50+ intended for players that have 90+%? Was the agony in lower tiers nerfed so that players could experience a wider range of challenges now and the difficulty could be increased after new gear is released? I don’t have those answers, but time will tell.

Dogger.1867:

(1.) Reduce Fractals to 3 levels, easy, normal, and hard. Easy would be level 1 as is for leveling alts and new players to get gear and experience in a fun dungeon. Normal would require an 80+ character and be the difficulty of 10 without agony. Hard should be level 20 with agony, only getting easier when more agony resist is required. With this model a Very Hard could be added down the road as more ascension gear is released.

If they want to preserve current functionality, just require each level to be completed 10 times to advance to the next. The problem with the way Fractals work is that each level is individually gated and fractures the community, but significant risk/reward changes only really happen when entering a new tier (1-9, 10-19, etc.) Gating content is a viable mechanic to check progression, but only when there is actual progression to check.